New Orleans Knockout Page 6

  The girl had been watching him intently, studying him. “I was just thinking,” she quietly admitted, “that Able Group sure stumbled into one hell of a mess.”

  “Right,” Bolan agreed. “You did. But it wasn’t carelessness that got you here. Vannaducci has the best-covered tracks in the country. It’s layer upon layer of business fronts, concealed interests, the whole bit so interwoven and complicated that most of his own underbosses don’t understand it. Except for Lanza. He’s the business brain—and that’s where the wicket gets sticky. There’s a lot of local jealousy and maneuvering for position on the old man’s inside track. At the moment, though, Lanza has the better track position because he’s the only one who really understands the business. The others are hoods, street punks in the big time who got there by being the meanest on the block. Which doesn’t make them the smartest—just the most dangerous. In one sense, they need Lanza. On the other hand, they’re afraid he’ll make the big grab and come up with all the goodies. So …”

  “God, we really walked into it,” Toni commented miserably.

  “That still isn’t all. I’ve been orchestrating a few things on my own. Setting it up, helping it mature, heating the pie and sending the odors wafting northward. The best way to beat a strong organization, especially a furtive one, is to get them to eating one another. I—”

  “Divide and conquer.”

  “Right. Let the enemy engage itself. The pieces that are left are much easier to mop up. It’s no coincidence of timing that I happen to be on the scene now, that I started my blitz when I did. I’ve been getting very strong intelligence readings of a crisis approaching for the Dixie mob, and timed for Mardi Gras. I rousted Carlotti this morning because I figured him for the strongest heir apparent, and I wanted to add some stiffening to his backbone.”

  “I don’t understand that. Stiffened against what?”

  “An invading coalition of New York and St. Louis mobs. It’s been brewing a long time. St. Louis is the poorest territory in the country. It needs expansion. The New York bosses have decided it’s time to stretch southward, before the old man lets everything fall to hell in intrafamily rivalry. St. Louis got the nod to move in. They’ve just been waiting for the right moment, and I believe this is it. I don’t want them to find it too easy. I want a double knockout here—not an easy victory for either faction.”

  Toni said, “Wow. You’re a sneaky dude, aren’t you?”

  “Name of the game,” Bolan said. “I just want you to understand what I mean when I speak of tight numbers. And now we come to the nitty gritty. A course of action for you. What I’m going to suggest will carry an element of risk. Play it right, though, and I believe the risk will be minimal. How’s your guts?”

  “Shaking,” she admitted with a droll smile. “But game. What’s the suggestion?”

  “Go to Lanza. Tell him the whole story—that is, about Kirk and the Able Group job. You’ve just discovered that your company was conned into an illegal surveillance contract, and your only wish now is to set things straight for the victim. Tell him how you conned him. Point out every bug in the place.”

  “Hey, wow,” Toni said, ashen-faced. “He’ll choke me and throw me in the pool. Won’t he?”

  “You conned him once, you could do it again. He liked you, didn’t he?”

  “Well, sure … but …”

  “Play it right and cover yourself, you could come out with a friend for life. Consider the guy’s position. He knows what’s going on around him. You’ll be doing him a big favor. You can show him his enemy. This Kirk guy, the one with a famous look-alike.”

  “He’d get that connection, eh?”

  “He’d get it. Might even be inclined toward a bit of gallantry toward the lovely lady, help her spring her partners. That’s the angle you have to play. Common friends against a common enemy. But—and this is important—you’ve never seen a tape from Lanza’s house and you know absolutely nothing about his business matters. You’re dumb, dumb, dumb—see?”

  “That’s easy,” she commented shakily. “I just go in and be honest. Except I don’t know he’s Mafia.”

  “Right. You’re scared, repentant, want to set things straight. And you want to find your partners.”

  She tossed her head and said, “Okay. I guess I can handle that. This will help your game, too, won’t it?”

  “It could,” Bolan admitted. “It could also end yours—there’s that possibility and you have to understand that. The whole thing could backfire. I’m not urging you to do it. But if you want a course of action …”

  “What it sifts out to is ‘put up or shut up.’ Right?”

  “That’s not what I had in mind,” Bolan assured her.

  “It amounts to that, just the same. It’s one thing to stamp one’s foot and demand that somebody else do something. That’s what I was doing, I guess. Now you’re saying—”

  “I’m saying nothing. It’s a grasping at straws. I can’t work an angle like that on Lanza. You can. If you want to.” Bolan checked the time. “The meeting at Vannaducci’s broke up an hour ago. Lanza will be home by now and digging fortifications. So I—”

  “Where do you keep your crystal ball?” she asked, attempting a smile.

  “I know my enemy,” he explained. “First rule of warfare. Well—what do you say? Are you game for the game?”

  “I’m game,” she said, sighing. “But—how do we get back together? I mean, we will—won’t we?”

  “I’ll try to cruise the corner of Claiborne and Canal at noon sharp, then at every even hour until we connect. I’ll try, that’s all I can promise.”

  “Fair enough. There’s, uh, no place I can contact you by phone—or leave word?”

  He grinned. “Not a chance. But if you just yell, from wherever you may happen to be, chances are I’ll hear.”

  “You mean you’ve got this whole town wired for sound?”

  “The pressure points, anyway.”

  “Gadgets told me once that you were a very apt pupil.”

  “I had a good teacher,” Bolan replied, very sober once again. “Ready to push off?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said, trying and failing to be flippant.

  He showed her a stern smile as he said, “Okay, hit the beach. Remember—it’s your game. Stay hard.”

  “I know what that means, too,” she told him. “First, though, I’ve got to get hard.”

  “You are,” he assured her. “Toni …”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re a hell of a gal.”

  “Thanks. You’re a hell of a guy. You stay hard!”

  She leapt to the pier and hurried away without looking back.

  Bolan gave her a count of ten, then moved out behind her.

  He wasn’t about to let that kid go it alone—not for all the timetables in funnytown. But he was cooling it, laying back and scouting the backtrack, and it was just as well that no one knew that but himself—not even Toni.

  The hardest lessons learned were the longest remembered.

  Mack Bolan was security-conscious, too.

  The Lanza joint would be double-teamed.

  9: INSTRUMENT RANGE

  Bolan’s warwagon for the New Orleans operation was something new and special—a uniquely out fitted and beautifully integrated GMC motor home, a sleek low-profile 26-footer designed with the sportsman in mind. Bolan was no sportsman; for this warrior, the fabulous new vehicle represented a comfortably appointed mobile command post, a field headquarters, an armory, and electronics surveillance unit, all in one—it was base camp.

  Most of the cost—about $100,000 of easy-come, easy-go Mafia-donated warchest funds—had been spent for special equipment and installation.

  The electronics were courtesy of the space program and incorporated the most sophisticated developments of space-age science. A moonlighting NASA engineer provided the labor and materials for the basic radio gear. A technical genius from a local electronics firm did the rest, even to desi
gning, building, and installing the computerlike selection and switching gear; highly sensitive directional audio pickup equipment; concealed or disguised antennae; optic marvels; a console for synchronizing, storing, sorting, editing, time-phasing, and even re-recording collected intelligence. He even had a mobile telephone and a simple radar unit.

  The NASA engineer admiringly dubbed the completed project a “terran module,” comparing it favorably with the best thing yet developed in lunar modules.

  Bolan liked it, though he was a bit awed by the electronic capabilities of his new warwagon. It would have blown Gadgets Schwarz’s electronic mind. What it all meant for Mack Bolan, in gross, was a wider range for his war effort. The gear in that van, of course, was entirely dependent on the military capabilities of the man it supported. He could “scan through” a neighborhood with the audio pickups operating and perhaps learn a thing or two about the enemy. He could probe for vehicles and unusual concealed masses of metal with the radar device. He could cruise within line-of-sight of planted radio bugs and trigger a quick-pulse collection without even stopping the vehicle—then unscramble, time-pulse, and play back the recording without leaving the driver’s seat. But all these capabilities merely widened the scope for the warrior. They did not fight the battles.

  Other special installations in the new warwagon provided the direct military support. There was a foldaway light-table for mapping and plotting battle lines, assault and withdrawal routes, and other tactical considerations. He had a fully equipped weapons lab and armory with concealed storage for munitions, explosives, tactical gadgets. In that lab he could build, modify, or repair all types of personal weapons as well as explosive devices.

  Large picture windows along the sides were made of one-way glass, thus affording Bolan plenty of visibility while effectively shielding the interior from curious eyes.

  Stock features on the vehicle included a 455-cubic-inch Toronado engine, slightly modified. Front traction with automatic transmission freed the rear tandem wheels from axles and conventional suspension—there were air bags instead of springs, adjustable from dashboard controls to raise or lower each side separately and compensate for uneven ground conditions. For animal comforts there was a galley, shower and toilet, and bunk space in the rear.

  Completely self-contained, she was a warwagon in every sense and a long-needed complement to Bolan’s war effort. Hopefully she would serve the man through many campaigns, but the sleek module would have been well worth the money if she carried him successfully through just this one.

  Bolan was thinking, in fact, that she was worth it for the present task alone. He was parked at the lakeshore within view of the Lanza place—door open, a dummy fishing pole that was actually a mobile radio antenna clipped casually to the front bumper, Bolan himself seated in the comfortably padded high-backed console-type driver’s seat and eyeing a reflecting plate installed at his right knee, part of the long-range optics capability.

  Toni had been inside the joint for ten minutes. Bolan had heard her reception at the main entrance, thanks to the audio telescope—a sophisticated “barrel mike.” They’d tried to put her off. “Mr. Lanza” was “very busy” and couldn’t be disturbed. Toni had tearfully insisted on an audience, Bolan grinning over her histrionics, which, at that, were about 95 percent genuine.

  One of the hardmen finally came down to pass her through the dog defenses. At that moment, Bolan lost direct audio contact, but he’d tracked them across the grounds with the optics, then regained audio via radio implantation at the entry foyer.

  Moving back to the switching gear at the electronics console, he’d tracked her through the house and into Lanza’s private digs off the pool-patio area. It was a gruff greeting by the lord of the manse—a mood that changed rapidly to disbelief, anger, then anxiety as Toni spun the tale of betrayal and invasion of privacy.

  At that point, Bolan had switched the audio monitoring to the front of the van and gone forward to maintain both visual and audio contact. He heard the breathless commands issuing from the inner sanctum, and moments later saw two hardmen running onto the grounds, heads craning toward the roof. Without benefit of barrel mikes he could hear the shout of discovery as one of the guys spotted the package atop the rotor control, then he watched with sober amusement as a ladder was brought around and a guy climbed hastily to the paydirt. Meanwhile not a word was coming through the radio pickup; Bolan understood this also—the sudden awareness of listening devices on the premises turns many normally garrulous people into mutes.

  The guy on the roof tossed the package into a pair of waiting hands on the ground.

  A moment later Bolan’s speaker stirred with the sound of a door opening and closing, footsteps and harsh breathing, a clump as a solid object came to rest on a desktop—then Toni’s quavery tones, “That’s it. It’s okay, you can talk now. That’s the central collector and transmitter. Nothing can go out now.”

  Lanza’s voice: “I’m a son of a bitch—pardon me, ma’am. I can’t believe it! This little thing here can bug my whole house?”

  Toni, explaining: “The actual bugs are in the antenna jacks, emplaced throughout the house. But they’re harmless now.”

  Lanza, warmly relieved: “Well now, little lady, that’s a real friendly thing you’ve done here. But I can’t imagine—I don’t get it—who in the world would want to snoop on my place? I mean I don’t understand it. Industrial espionage, I guess. Eh?”

  Toni: “That’s probably it. My company specializes in protecting men in your position, Mr. Lanza. When I found out we’d been had … well, I was scared to death to tell you. But I was even more afraid not to tell you. Gosh, I—”

  Lanza, cutting in: “Oh, say, I mean—you did right, the right thing. I admire you for that. I mean, not everyone can admit they been wrong. Uh, what’d you say this man’s name was? This man that hired you?”

  Toni, getting stronger: “He said his name was Kirk. The credentials looked perfect, but I’m positive now that’s an alias. I could give you a description, though, if that would help.”

  Lanza, still hot: “Oh, sure, sure—you bet. Just a minute, uh …” Chair creaking, a rustling of paper, then: “Okay, what’d this guy look like?”

  Toni, thoughtful, picking words carefully: “Well, he was about medium height, I’d say. But … well … something odd about that. Uh … yes, odd. You know—have you ever seen a man who wears elevator shoes? I believe, yes—he wore elevator shoes, very fancy ones. Uh … well built, very beautifully dressed—stylish, you know. Handsome, too, a very handsome man—very white teeth, black hair, sort of dark skinned—uh …”

  Lanza, dissatisfied with that: “Anything, uh, really distinguishing? You know—marks, scars, tattoos—anything like that?”

  Toni, thinking that over: “No … but … he reminded me of somebody, uh …”

  Lanza, thoughtfully: “You mean like someone on TV or the movies or something.”

  Toni, still working at the image: “Yes, uh … a singer, a singer, yes—uh, the man who comes from Italy, the romantic uh … uh …” She had him hooked now, Bolan was thinking. He’d set the hook for himself.

  Sure enough—Lanza, groaning: “You don’t mean Enzo Stuarti!”

  Toni, crowing: “That’s the one! Do you know—does that mean something to you?”

  Lanza, very subdued now and thoughtful: “Aw, no, no—but at least it’s something to go on. Say, uh, you know how much I appreciate all this, Mrs. Davidson. You, uh, you say your fellows disappeared before they ever got this thing going? You, uh, you sure of that?”

  Toni, positively: “We never turnkeyed the job, Mr. Lanza. I believe my partners must have found out it was illegal and went to see this bogus Mr. Kirk. I’m sure they wouldn’t give him details of the installation or any of the receiving gear if they even suspected—”

  Lanza, relieved: “Okay, I understand. I don’t want you to be worrying that pretty head about, your partners. I have my ways around this town, and I want to assure yo
u that I’ll do everything I can to find those men of yours. You put your address and phone number on this pad here. I’ll be getting in touch. And don’t you worry. But now I’ll have to ask you to excuse me. I have a million things to do and—”

  Toni: “Oh, certainly. You’re being very nice about this. I hope there’s some way I can make it up to you. I mean …”

  Lanza, still very subdued: “You already did, believe me. But if you don’t think so, then I bet we could figure out something, couldn’t we. Maybe you could take me out to dinner or something—after Mardi Gras, eh?”

  Toni: “You’re on. Well, you’re just a marvelous man. Do you know—can you believe it?—I was scared to death to come back here!”

  Lanza, laughing: “Shows how wrong you can be, huh. Listen, you really do owe me a dinner. I’m going to collect it. Soon as I turn up those partners for you, I’m going to collect.”

  Toni, walking away from pickup: “You know how much I appreciate …”

  Bolan lost her there. He could hear heavy footsteps, muffled voices, the door opening. Apparently Lanza was accompanying her out.

  Bolan returned quickly to the console and activated the autoswitchers, scanning and tracking her through the house and outside. When he returned forward to the optic tracking, Toni was being escorted to the gate by the same guy who’d brought her in; Lanza was nowhere in view.

  As Toni’s car hit the main drive, an audio scanner brought in Lanza’s shouting commands, heavy with profanity and a rage that was building on itself. “Call Zeno! Tell ’im we’re coming back out and goddammit we got some hot shit to discuss with the old man! If that fuckin’ Carlotti is around there, he’s to stay until we get there! Bastard, son of a bitch, what a great fuckin’ ride this has been—holding the whole goddam thing together with my bare hands and these rotten fucks, bugging me—can you imagine?—I can’t, I just can’t imagine …”